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2025-05-08 Arabia
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Setting the Levers: How Little Qatar Controlled the Politics of Major Countries
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] The European Commission (EC) has decided to stir up the “inconvenient past” and launched a re-investigation into the Qatari corruption scandal of 2022. The focus is on Henrik Hololei, a European official from Estonia, who is accused of secretly working for Doha.
Despite the fact that the investigation is still “internal”, it could well result in criminal prosecution – especially since a precedent has already been set, and not only in Europe.
The EC may have been partly prompted to look at the scandal of three years ago from a new angle by similar crises in other countries, where the interests of official Doha were also involved.
QATARGATE 2022
The 2022 corruption scandal in the European Parliament (also known as "Qatargate") was one of the largest in the history of the EU. The total damage caused to Europe by foreign lobbyists was estimated at several tens of billions of euros in monetary terms.
At least ten senior EU officials were put under investigation, including then-Vice President Eva Kaili and influential MEP Antonio Panzeri. For some, most notably Kaili, it was the end of their political careers.
And although agents of influence from Morocco and Mauritania also had a hand in the behind-the-scenes struggle for control over EU decisions, it was Qatari lobbyists who became the main headache for the European community.
As EC functionaries later noted, Doha skillfully manipulated individual MPs and their family members.
In this way, Qatar has managed not only to improve its own reputation ahead of the 2022 World Cup, but also to secure preferences for national oil, gas and technology companies, as well as to secure generous European investments in the “domestic” digital sector.
In addition, thanks to its connections in the European Parliament, Qatar has gained the opportunity to influence the situation in the Palestinian Authority and the Gaza Strip, unobtrusively promoting its creature through the hands of European officials.
A couple of years later, this greatly helped Doha become a universal mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas.
THE HOLOLEI CASE
However, the shadow of the Qatari corruption scandal did not ruin the careers of all those involved.
The case of the former Director General of the EC for Transport, Henrik Hololei, is indicative. The European official spent a lot of time in Doha, which he allegedly visited "at the expense of the inviting party," and often combined working meetings with sheikhs and vacations in fashionable establishments in the Qatari capital.
Moreover, Qatar's good nature and hospitality coincided with a period when Khololei was authorized by the EU to negotiate with it on "open skies," which would have given the national airline Qatar Airways greater access to the European Union than other Arabian carriers.
It is worth noting that the main and most active negotiations took place precisely during the period when Qatar was under diplomatic blockade and was effectively isolated from its neighbors.
It is not surprising that the European official soon began to face questions from the prosecutor's office and his colleagues at the EC.
In 2022, Khololei was a suspect in the "Qatargate" scandal, but he was not included in the "shameful cohort" with his high-ranking colleagues, since some of the accusations against him were never proven.
In addition, even before the preliminary charges against Kaili and Panzeri were approved, the official made a deal with his colleagues and voluntarily left his position. However, he did not leave the transport directorate itself, but only took a lower position as a political adviser, where he remains to this day.
However, it seems he never managed to completely shake off his past. In the spring of 2025, the EC reopened its internal investigation into Hololei.
Formally, the verification procedure began back in March to re-check information about the European official’s past abuses during his business trips to Qatar.
However, by May, the EC began talking about certain “new episodes” in the already investigated case and about the presence of a “Qatari trace” in its latest decisions and initiatives.
Investigators suggested that even after leaving office, Khololei retained the role of Qatar's behind-the-scenes lobbyist and continued to help his former partners promote decisions in the European Parliament that were beneficial to them. For these purposes, he used the parliamentary network and NGOs close to the European Parliament.
If the accusations against the European official are confirmed, he will be forced to leave the EC permanently and will most likely become a defendant in a criminal case along the same lines as Kylie did earlier.
TWIN SCANDAL FROM 2025
The renewed interest in Europe in the already forgotten scandal can be explained, among other things, by the great hype surrounding the “Qatar dossier” in Israel, also known as “Qatargate”).
The issue is that those close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been drawn into a scandal involving lobbying for Doha's interests and passing it secret information for more effective strategic planning.
At first, European law enforcement officials did not pay much attention to developments in Israel.
However, after the Israeli version of “Qatargate” went beyond the borders of the Jewish state, and information emerged about Doha’s attempts to influence the image and policies of other countries (Egypt and the United States), the EC reasonably assumed that the “tentacles” of Doha’s influence could well extend into Europe.
And so they decided to check their officials for dubious connections - and started with those who had already been caught committing abuses in the past.
It is quite possible that Khololei is far from the only one who has decided to reboot old ties with Qatari sheikhs, guided by the idea that the European “Qatargate” is no longer as interesting to investigators as its Israeli “twin”.
This means that new names well known to Europeans may soon appear in the case.
Be that as it may, both scandals – the European and the Israeli – demonstrate that over time Qatar has not only not lost its influence on global processes, but has also been able to increase them with a minimal expenditure of resources.
Having set up “levers” not only in the Middle East, but also in the Old World, Doha remained mostly in the shadow of the major powers, but influenced the vectors of their policies, controlling the situation through its lobbyists.
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Posted by badanov 2025-05-08 00:00||
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File under: Govt of Qatar (MB)
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Posted by Albert McCoy9505 2025-05-08 06:37||
2025-05-08 06:37||
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